Last Wednesday night as I sat in a pew in my own church, another church experienced something straight out of a horror film. If you live in America, you know what I am referencing. A young white man, whom I will not name, walked into a church that was predominately black and asked if he could speak with the pastor. He then proceeded to shoot and kill 9 people, including the pastor. Now, some are willing to make excuses for this young man stating mental illness, and instability or are diluted enough to believe that this entire scenario was not motivated by racism.

The trinity is one of Christianity’s oldest and most mysterious doctrines. It has been a topic of much discussion and was in fact one of the first theological areas that theologians attempted to flush out. I’m not going to go into all of that here (mostly because a few books could be written on the topic) but the point I am trying to make ring home is that throughout the church’s history, this has been a topic of importance to the church. For this very reason, it is something worth understanding (as best we can).

It is amazing to me how good we are at deceiving ourselves. One moment we are doing something we should not be and in the next moment acting as if the previous moment never occurred. Seeing things for what they are rather than how we’d like them to be can be a challenge. Every man who committed an evil act began in that act with good intentions. Hitler wanted to see the German people be proud in being German again. His love for his people, and his culture drove him to madness. He is now considered the most evil man of the 20th century if not the most evil man to have ever walked the face of the earth. Hitler had deceived himself into thinking that his actions were right, despite the physical evidence proving that they were not.